


with a look

by a_secondhand_sorrow



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Battle of Starcourt (briefly), Canon Compliant, Especially Jon, F/M, I love their dynamic so much I have barely scratched the surface, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Panic Attacks, Joyce is a good mom, Spoilers, el and her brothers, el bonding with the Byers!, its not that angsty just a little, not that angsty! but a bit, nothing explicitly mentioned but something that could be construed as one, post-season 3, so if that's not good for you please be careful, some nice mil even for your 1 am enjoyment, stories of little mike being a scoundrel, they are fantastic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23355691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_secondhand_sorrow/pseuds/a_secondhand_sorrow
Summary: El does what she always does: learns, adjusts, and tries to move on.(or: just some el and the byers bonding, with a dash of mileven)
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, Jonathan Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Joyce Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	with a look

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this right after season 3 came out and then never posted it - so here it is!

Of all of the things El had done, she’d never ended up sitting in the back of an ambulance. It only made the aftermath of Starcourt feel less real, ending the battle surrounded in a safe yet completely unfamiliar place. Only Mike’s presence next to her–his knee pressing into hers, the pressure of his arm around her shoulders, his ever-present warmth even as he shook slightly–kept her grounded to the moment. Everything else was a waiting game, even though most of the battle had finished. A waiting game for the whining in her ears to quiet. A waiting game for the Mind Flayer to return. A waiting game for her powers - the only constant she ever had - to return. 

(A waiting game for Hop to resurface.)

Another car door slammed, nearly inaudible in the chaos of the parking lot. She felt herself flinch, even though she didn’t mean to. Mike’s arm tightened around her shoulders. 

“They’ll be back soon,” he says, and it comes out as more of a whisper. She’s not exactly sure what he’s referring to, but it comforts her in some way to hear him say it. 

“I know,” she says, and they both know she’s not telling the truth. 

“Is your leg okay?” He asks after a pause, his arm still tight around her shoulders, and somehow she hears him asking a million things in those four words that she’s not sure if she can answer without the burning at the back of her eyes catching into a full fire. 

So instead she settles for a shrug, as best she can with his arm around her shoulders. Once she’s forced tears back, she looks back up at Mike, even though it requires her to twist her neck in a weird angle that hurts a little. Her heart skips a beat like she’s missed a step going down the stairs as she studies his face–he’s exhausted, with dark smudges deep under his eyes and skin stretched tight against his cheeks. He must be able to feel her look at him since he smiles, a soft smile that looks more involuntary than anything else

“Did I ever tell you about the time I broke my arm in second grade?”

El shakes her head, and he must feel it against his shoulder because he continues on with the story. 

“Well, I was a stupid eight year old–like, really incapable of thinking–and I always thought I knew how to solve any problem. I know what you’re thinking-“ his voice drips in sarcasm- “oh, but you _do_ know the answer to every problem.”

El buries her face in his shoulder to stifle the gentle laugh that bubbles up in her throat. Mike doesn’t seem to mind that she laughed at his stupid joke with his stupid light-hearted voice. His stupid, beautiful light-hearted voice, one she can’t quite see as entirely light-hearted. The edge of fatigue and uncertainty in it sets her slightly on edge. 

(She couldn't really read anyone else. She was told she was “bad at picking up social cues” from some people, but Mike - Mike, she’d never had trouble reading him more easily than words on a page.)

“I appreciate your vote of confidence, really I do, but I knew even less as an eight-year-old. So when my dad decided to hide all the cookies up high so only he could reach them, I made Lucas help me–this was before Dustin moved here–make sure the coast was clear in the kitchen before climbing up a chair and onto the counter to reach the cookies. By your groan, I assume you know where this is going.”

She can’t help but smile at the idea of little Mike, so full of confidence and cockiness, scurrying up onto the counters of his kitchen. 

“So yeah, I fell, obviously, somewhere in that absolutely foolproof plan, and fractured my arm in two places. I had a cast for eight weeks. I almost fell on Lucas, too, but I managed to stop myself. Which was good, because that would’ve probably ruined our friendship. We argue enough as it is.”

Her voice is soft and a little scratchy as she replies. “It wouldn’t have.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But, I, well, I guess that was a long-winded way of saying I’ve been there too. Except it’s really nothing alike because that was a self-inflicted broken bone and not a wound from trying to heroically save my friends from a monster and then being infected by it, and this was just me rambling for no reason.”

She cuts him off before he can get too far into his spiral because if there’s one thing Mike can do, it’s work himself into an anxious ramble. Her voice is barely higher than a whisper, but he stills as soon as he hears it. She can feel his body relax just a little, his heartbeat slowing under her fingertips. “I wish I knew you, then.”

There’s a pause before Mike responds. It’s almost instant, the way he tenses-a type of tenseness she’s learned over the past 6 months that meant he’d felt anger coiling in his stomach- and with it she knew his mind had returned to Brenner and the Hawkins Lab just like hers had. She knows, from many soft-spoken conversations and held hands, the unrivaled fear and anger and protectiveness that Mike’s eyes flash with whenever El’s whereabouts only two years prior come up. He’s never said it, but it radiates off of him in waves of heat she’s always been able to feel. “Me, too,” he says finally, and there is an unspoken promise in it she could swear she hears.

She feels safe as she lowers her head onto his shoulder and reaches for his free hand, lacing their fingers together. They’ve done it hundreds of times, but it still catches something in El’s throat and sends her heartbeat jumping in her wrist. She lets her eyes drift shut, the chaos around them shifting in blocks of color behind the stark black of her eyelids.

Mike leans his cheek onto her head, and they sit like that for a moment, even as flashing sirens color the truck around them.

“Seems like you’re used to this,” El says, trying to keep her voice light and joking, eyes still closed. It takes a moment for Mike to respond. 

“I guess I’ve done this before.”

“Sat on the back of an ambulance? Gotten knocked out?”

He runs his thumb over her knuckles. “Yeah.”

El opens her eyes, first locked on their intertwined hands, before she adjusts to look back up at him. He’s not smiling, and a faraway look rests on his face. 

“At the middle school?” She says quietly. He nods. El squeezes his hand at the same time as his arm pulls her ever so closer to him. Gently swapping his hand to her right hand, she winds her now-free arm around his waist, leaning her head back onto his shoulder. 

(She can almost forget, with her body firmly against his and the cold, unforgiving metal of the ambulance beneath her, with the warmth and comfort radiating from him-she can almost forget the anxiety that has wound its way around her heart.)

“You’re here now,” Mike whispers just above her head, hand rubbing her shoulder. “We’re together. I need to keep reminding myself.”

She nods into his shoulder. “I’m here.”

Her mind flashes back to the cabin, and Mike’s voice as he shouts _I love her and I can’t lose her again._

After a moment, Mike nudges her. “I see Mrs. Byers.”

El rights herself quickly, eyes opening against the onslaught of flashing lights and the near sea of moving people. She ducks out from under Mike’s arm after pressing a quick kiss to his cheek, eyes immediately seeking out the crowd. From a cursory glance, she can’t see Hop. Every second she can’t see him makes her heart beat faster. 

After a moment of confusion as to how to best lower herself down from the ambulance, El finds herself on the pavement with Mike still seated behind her. She hadn’t noticed it while she sat curled next to him, but the wound on her forehead pulsed as her heart picked up pace and ears filled with the static of a headrush. 

(She’s in the void, for the barest moment, but there’s nothing else there. Just her feet that can feel the water splashing, her eyes that can see only black for an eternity in all directions, her hands that suddenly become weightless.)

She pushes forward as soon as the static-y sound has died down once more and her vertigo has lessened. Her feet hardly feel like they are touching the ground at all, much less pounding pavement, most likely because of the flurry of activity around her. At least one paramedic tries to convince her to sit back down, but she brushes her hand off of her shoulder and shifts her weight to her good leg. The paramedic acquiesces, possibly because of the sudden steel in her eyes and furrow in her brow. 

Will darts past her, a blur of red and a shout of “mom!”, and El sees Joyce just ahead of him. They catch each other’s eyes the exact moment before Will reaches her. Her face is drawn and upset, and maybe a little fear reflects off of her eyes, and El’s stomach turns over unpleasantly at it. She wraps Will in a tight hug, eyes squeezing shut for a moment, and El looks, again, for Hop. He’s not there. He’s nowhere. 

Joyce opens her eyes again, and this time the grief is plain in them. El has no choice but to stare back, drawing everything she can from that one glance. Her eyes squeeze shut again and the pavement cracks beneath her, stealing all the air from her lungs. Her heart plummets at the same time it picks up speed, her head pounding and ears filled with static and the rushing sounds of blood. Lightheadedness strikes across her vision, and El is left staring out at the parking lot by herself. 

By _herself_. 

There’s no one else for her, in that flurry of activity. Half of her (all of her, every last inch of her) hopes Hop will step out from nowhere, crushing her in a hug with a _‘hey, kid’_ , but then Joyce’s eyes blink out at her and she can feel her own burning as she shakes her head a little. She shuts her eyes in some vain hope that it will hide her tears, but she can feel them spill over despite. Some half-choked sob builds up in her throat, quieter than she thought it would be, as though she’d lost the ability to make noise, her head falling forward ever so slightly. He’s nowhere. She’s deserted, her heartbeat pounding in the cut on her forehead. 

(Hadn’t he _promised_?)

And she stands like that, untethered from everything else happening and static in her ears but no water at her feet until she feels a hand touch her shoulder. It’s only then that she can feel the warmth of the tears on her cheeks and the lump in her throat. The pain in her leg and head slash back to life, her heartbeat pounding in each, and it takes all of her energy to not crumple on the spot just from them. Forcing her eyes open as she turns to see Mike, he appears as blurred and unfocused as everything else. She shakes her head as his hand cups her cheek. He’s little more than a blur of blue and brown and white, even as his fingers trace gently across her face. “El?” He says, voice so full of uncertainty she can feel more tears surging to the surface because of them. Her face crumples and Mike pulls her forward, careful of her bandage, and lets her wrap her arms around his neck as his wrap around her back. His hands steady her, even as she grasps wildly onto him, and his head settles next to hers. “El,” he says again, lips right next to her ear. She can’t stop shaking her head. She can’t stop _shaking_. 

“El,” he says once more, hand reaching to hold the back of her head. “It’s okay. I’m here. _You’re_ here.” 

( _But he’s not_ is the only thing she can think.) She presses her face tighter into the crook of his neck, and she’s certain he’s the only thing holding her steady when it feels like the ground has dropped from beneath her feet. She’s not sure how long they stand there, but when she pulls back Mike’s hand is on her cheek and steadying her on her shoulder and Joyce is right behind her, eyes confirming every fear she’s held without a single word.

* * *

There’s a different silence to the Byers’.

That, El has learned, is what changes a house. Each one has a different sort of silence, especially when the dark falls, the air hanging between each person and the stifling between room. Or maybe it’s just the energy it holds, the different feelings in the relationships between its inhabitants. Maybe it’s the different type of grief it fosters, although that may be only related to her own experience. 

She’d grown used to the stillness of the cabin, the complete isolation of all sounds save for the gentle noises of Hopper’s moving or the nature around them, and the kind of homey, cushioned silence of Mike’s basement before that. Of course, there was the eerie, sterile silence – or absence of sound, more accurately – of the Hawkins Lab, but that was hardly a home. 

The Byers’ feels completely different, in a stifling way. 

Because it’s packed with people – Will next to her and Jonathan across from her and Joyce down the hall, and everyone together at every meal. It’s a silence that they’re clearly used to, a camaraderie that comes from lifetimes together, one that El has not been able to learn and imitate. There is so much to say without words, and she can’t quite read it correctly on their faces, like a language she has just begun to learn. 

In some terrible Soap Opera cliché (as she half-expects Hop to pop out of nowhere and tease her about, just like before), it’s like the nights are the worst, since that stillness is only amplified by everyone being asleep where they are comfortable, where they are adjusted, where they are safe, and where El is not used to anything. 

(How she longs for nights in the cabin, with Hop’s snores filtering through her closed door and the house creaking around them.)

And El has barely learned what every emotion means, and what it means to feel them, but suddenly it’s like she’s feeling every single one at once and it’s too much. She wants to go back to July 4th and stop herself from losing Hop just like she’s lost everything else in her life. She wants to stay in Hawkins and not move away like Joyce is planning to, to commit every groove of every street to memory. She wants to go to Mike and wrap him up in her arms and never let go. 

So she walks to her closet, pulls out a flannel of Hop’s, and tugs it on. The tough fabric feels good, pulling at her hands. It still smells like his woodsy cologne. 

She shuts her eyes for a moment, allowing herself to _be_ , before she moves towards the kitchen to get water. 

Instead of bothering with a light, she uses the light coming through the window to fumble around for a glass and clumsily fill it with water. Everything feels disorienting in that half-light, and the water feels cool in the glass, so she stumbles to the table to sit and presses the outside of the glass to her forehead. 

It’s there that everything hits her. She feels alone and caught off guard, the absence of her powers striking her harder than ever before. It feels palpable, and if she focuses on it, there it is-an emptiness just right of her gut, a high lurched whining in her ears where there should be nothing and silence everywhere when there should be _something_. She hates the feeling, but it’s the only thing she can actually control now, so she lets herself sit in it with the glass pressed against her forehead. 

The kitchen light flickers on, and El looks up quickly as though she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Joyce stands across the room, shadows under her eyes and hair mussed with sleep. “Hey, sweetheart,” she says as she moves stiffly across the kitchen, voice gravelly. “Do you feel okay?”

El quickly moves the glass from her forehead, nodding. “It just felt nice.”

Joyce frowns a little, still, holding her hand to El’s forehead. When she’s confident that El is telling the truth, she relaxes back and pulls out the chair next to El at the table. “Couldn’t sleep?”

El nods, suddenly feeling her throat narrow. 

“Neither could I,” Joyce admits, leaning back in her chair. She lets them sit for another moment, El’s thumb tracing invisible patterns over the glass. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Probably seeing the way El’s eyebrows pinch together in confusion, Joyce lets off a soft “right” before she explains. ”It’s a figure of speech. Did H-” she falters, and El’s glance drops back to the glass, her thumb drawing circles again as Joyce takes barely a moment to retrace her steps. “Has anyone told you about those?”

El nods shortly, eyes still on the glass. “Mike did. But I haven’t heard that.”

“It’s like a - a way of asking someone if they’re willing to tell you what they’re thinking about. With a metaphorical penny to pay for them, but I don’t have a real penny on me right now.” To punctuate this, she pats down the side of her flannel pajama pants, and El can feel the edges of her lips begin to quirk upwards. Not for the first time, El finds herself caught in the way Joyce’s voice comes out gentle and gravelly and uncertain, just how much affection she manages to fit into it with all of those other things. ”So what are you thinking about?”

El shrugs. Without any real thought in the action, her eyes flit around beyond where Joyce sits, examining the plaster walls, the wooden cabinets, the too-large windows, and the moment feels a little too much like that first night at Mike’s so long ago. But she’s sure her face is blanker than she feels. “It’s quiet. Different quiet.”

“The house?”

El nods, and her thumb begins tracing those patterns again, gaze falling back to the glass. It’s easier to look at than the little lines around Joyce’s eyes that seem to say more and more as they deepen each day.

“I’ll bet. Different from being entirely out in the woods, yeah?”

She forces her eyes up to look into Joyce’s, which are wide and tired and a little sad beneath their comforting façade. ”Yeah. And without him, but with three different people.”

Joyce’s frown deepens slightly, hand reaching out to rest on El’s forearm. When she doesn’t continue, Joyce attempts to lighten the heaviness that’s filled the air. “Well, Will and Jon are nightmares to live with.”

El laughs, the sound a little hollower than she’d like. 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Joyce says a moment later, hand squeezing her arm, and El finds the pressure grounding. “I know-I know I don’t know exactly what it’s like, but I know that we’ve all felt something similar to what you’re feeling, and it’s terrible, and I’m heartbroken for you that you have to go through it. If I could, I’d take it all for you-I’d take the weight off of your chest, and I’d let you be _happy_ , El. I’m sorry I can’t.”

El feels her throat narrowing again and heat burning in her eyes, Joyce’s words striking some nerve she’d didn’t know was raw. She shakes her head, trying to shake the feeling away, but it doesn’t much like that idea, and for another moment - a moment that’s all too familiar - she’s stranded, as though on an island, with this emotion, even with Joyce right in front of her. 

She feels a pressure on her shoulder, and it takes her a moment to realize it’s Joyce’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispers again, and El can hear how Joyce’s voice has gone thin with the threat of tears. 

“Don’t be,” She almost breathes, though it comes out shaky and uncertain. She blinks once, twice. “It’s not-not your fault.”

She offers her a watery smile. “I don’t know about that.”

They sit like that for another minute, each thinking of the same yet entirely opposite things, right next to each other in the familiar yet uncharted Byers kitchen. El starts to float less, until it finally feels like she’s back in her chair. The pressure of Joyce’s hand has been there for a while, but the sharp edge of the chair against her thigh comes into focus, the cold of the tile against her foot, the new aggressiveness of the light violent to her eyes. 

“Can Mike come over for Thanksgiving?” She blurts suddenly. It’s a new habit, this blurting; She’d never done it before. Before, she’d either never had the words to say what she wanted or had the opportunity set up in front of her perfectly. There were no awkward transitions from one topic to the next; she had no reason to navigate them. Joyce’s expression shifts ever so slightly, and for a split second she thinks she’s mad, but then she recognizes the expression on her face. It’s the same Will has just before he reaches the punchline of a joke, the one Jonathan has every once in a while when she sees him looking at Nancy in the middle of her sentence. Amusement, with some fondness, she realizes. 

“Well, we’ll have to talk about it more in-depth later,” She begins, and El’s relieved to hear the thinness of her voice is gone. ”But I think we could work something out like that, yeah.”

El smiles a little, her thumb rubbing against the edge of her flannel sleeve. Her gaze drops down to it, her face falling with it, certainly. Joyce’s voice goes quiet again. 

“You’re really gonna miss him.”

El nods without looking back up, upset but not surprised to find that her eyes have that familiar burning sensation again. 

“I know,” Joyce says, and El thinks fleetingly that her voice may have thickened this time around. ”I know you will. And I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can say-well, nothing I can really say to make it better. I’m sorry. I hope this is the right decision. But you’ll see him. You will-time flies, really, El, and it’ll hurt, but…” she trails off, clearly not certain of how to reassure her. 

“Yeah,” El says, blinking rapidly. She stands, half-full glass in her hand. “I think - I may go back to sleep.”

Joyce’s eyes roam over her face. “Yes. Yeah, of course, sweetheart.” Before El can move entirely, she’s pulled into an off-balance hug by Joyce, one that, like the silence of the house, isn’t bad - it’s just different. Even so, she finds herself relaxing into the embrace, her chin jutting (most likely) uncomfortably against Joyce’s shoulder, but Joyce doesn’t say anything. 

***

A knock on her door resounds sometime after lunch but before dinner. El startles a little, gaze jolting away from her boxes. She’d paused over one, her hand tracing unclear patterns on the fabric of a flannel for who knows how long. From the way her eyes had begun to fuzz over, it had been a while, her standing there and staring blankly. 

“Yeah?” she says, voice smaller than she expected. 

The door slides open, and into her view comes Jonathan, something big and heavy-looking in his arms. He offers her a thin but unhurried smile, and for a moment he looks so much like Joyce that she’s filled with this tangle of confusion and happiness and yearning for family for just a moment, and through that flurry she finds her own lips curling upwards into a smile that almost reaches her eyes. Something about Jonathan’s presence is steadying, in a different way than his family members and her friends. Softer, almost, like how he got whenever he dropped Will off somewhere and watched him walking towards the Party, when he thought none of Will’s friends could see. 

Jonathan sets the box down on an old side table in her room, his breathing somewhat heavy as he turns back to face her, reaching for a few long sleeves tucked beneath his arm. He flips his hair out of his eyes with the other hand.

“That is...heavier than I remember it being.” He straightens a bit. Jon’s eyes flit to where El stands over her suitcase. “How’s the packing going? Nice shirt, by the way.”

El blinks and looks down at the flannel. She smiles just a bit once again. “It’s okay.” She drops the flannel into the case. “What d’you have?”

Jonathan’s unhurried smile returns at that, and it seems younger on his face than it did before, and it takes El a second to realize why: it’s excitement on his face that makes the bags under his eyes less pronounced. His brow creases like Will’s does when he’s concentrating on something. “Well, packing isn't that important, anyway,” he says, selecting one of the thin sleeves and setting the others down. He glances back to her. “I heard from Will that you like - who was it again, Corey Hart?”

_(She only knew the name from what he’s said, breaking off to sing dorkily, all just-barely-in-tune and overdramatic gesturing before he finally gave in and grinned and let her shush him, her hands meeting the soft skin of his face, all “Mike, stop!” and silly giggles, before he leaned in again and met her lips with his, the summer heat barely touching either of them.)_

Instead of saying any of that, El nods.

“I figured I’d introduce you to some classics,” Jonathan said, “much as I’d love to hear you listen to outdated pop.”

El doesn’t respond, but she turns to sit on her bed. The sleeve of the record Jonathan holds is covered in harsh, jagged lettering and the faces of people she doesn’t know. Jonathan spins it between his fingers before finally lowering it to the player. The drums are the first thing she really hears - something about the constant rhythm and lower-than-noise sound of them seems to take root in her before anything else can. Normally she connects with soft, catchy melodies, but she barely even notices the melody in this song. 

Jonathan takes a seat next to her, his head bobbing to the music. A smile spreads over his face, and it feels almost private, so El looks away, letting herself just listen. She can feel her hands starting to match the pattern of the drums as they tap against the bedspread. 

“The Clash is good, right?” Jon says. “This was Will’s favorite when he was in, like, fifth grade.”

“Bet he drove you crazy listening to it,” El mutters before she can think about it. Jonathan laughs. 

“A little, yeah. But I still love it.” 

“It’s good,” El admits. “Not what I’m used to. But I like it.”

“Everyone with good taste likes The Clash,” Jonathan says. His voice is pulled tight like Joyce’s often is, but his isn’t from worry, as El has learned while living with them. His comes from a soft, persistent sarcasm that takes up so much vocal space that his inherited voice pops out. The smile he sends her way is a little more genuine, and she feels lucky to have been on the receiving end of both the smile and the sarcasm. It makes her feel closer to being a part of the family unit that is the Byers, with all their unspoken routines. 

“Maybe you should start drumming,” Jonathan says. El realizes that her drumming has increased in volume, but Jonathan’s remark doesn’t make her feel ashamed. It seems more like an observation. 

“Maybe,” El says sheepishly. “I like it.”

“The drumming or the song?”

“Both.”

Jonathan nods. “Good. We’ll keep on with both, then.”

And the casual _we -_ like Jonathan is always going to be a fixture of El’s life, like she’s just as important to him as Will is, like he really cares about her finding a hobby that makes her happy or sharing his own with her - is the first time El smiles, really _smiles_ without anything holding her back. She just grins, ear-to-ear, and nods, and Jonathan grins back. 

* * *

It’s goodbye, after that. 

Not _goodbye, Mike_. Not that, not ever again. But it is goodbye, not for forever, but for now. For six weeks, until Thanksgiving rolls around. Six weeks without him. 

She’s done worse. She’ll make it. 

She knows she will, but that doesn’t make it hurt less. 

There’s a ton of hugging and crying, from every single one of the Party. She can’t remember much else while she finally steps in front of Mike. 

It feels like these last few months have been filled with little moments like these with him. Moments that seem to slow down as they, with almost one mind, reach forward at the same time and pull themselves closer together. Her face crumples as she presses it into Mike’s shoulder, her hands almost cradling his face, his arms wrapped under her shoulders. It’s not their first hug like this. Not their last, either, if she has anything to say about it. But it’s better and worse, somehow. Because they know they’ll come out on the other side of it. Because they know they’ll come out on the other side of it different. It’s different from their hugs where she’s perched on the edge of her bed at the Byers and she’s crying because she doesn’t know what to feel and he’s crying because it hurts him, to see her upset. And it’s different from their hugs in his basement that feel almost domestic and sheltered, even though they all look similar. It hurts more--that bittersweet knowledge that there’s only one more moment in his arms but that they’ll be together again. It’s worse than not knowing which moment is the last. 

She summons a strength from somewhere, a strength she knew she had but didn’t expect to use in this moment, and pulls away from him. His arms don’t unlatch from around her completely, as though afraid she’ll go. She keeps his head in between her hands and presses her forehead to his. She commits the feeling of his head under her fingertips to memory. For the weeks ahead, El wants to remember that feeling - a feeling like she is holding the gold world between her fingertips. She needs to remember it, because she needs to remember what she’s waiting for, needs something to remember him by. Finally, she lets her hands drop. And it’s done.

For six weeks, it’s done.

* * *

They start a board game night. 

It’s kind of a silly thing. Mundane, really. But Will missed playing D&D with the Party, and El missed seeing all of the Byers while they were off at work and school, and Jonathan and Joyce were just looking for distractions. El pulls out Monopoly one night, a week into the new house. She teams up with Will, as the two youngest people there. It turns out he is absolutely brutal at it, outchampioning Joyce and Jon easily even with El dragging him down. “A true capitalist,” Jonathan says, his voice thin with sarcasm. 

The next week, Joyce digs out an old deck of Uno cards. They only manage two games - Jonathan wins the first in about seven minutes, but the second drags on almost as long as their Monopoly game. Will keeps managing to draw more and more cards. Joyce nearly spits out her tea when he drops ten on the floor and exclaims “oh, darn!” in a soft tone of voice. El is the surprise winner of the round; she’s so quiet compared to the other three that when she says Uno they all startle. She wins with a wild card +4, and, playing until the final loser as always, Will rolls his eyes and draws another four cards. Unsurprisingly, he comes fourth. 

The third week, Mike calls on the supercomm in the middle of Scrabble. Will and El leave early and retreat to El’s room to talk with him. He seems a bit quieter every time they talk to him, too, as though he’s retreating in on himself. El forces herself to remember that there’s only three more weeks until she can see him again, rather than having to sustain herself on the grainy, strained sound of his voice over the supercomm. Will leaves El in her room when Mike shares that he’ll have to head back to his house soon, promising that he’ll make sure no one gets too far ahead of her in points. 

“Only three more weeks, right?” Mike says, his voice softer now that Will isn’t in the room. 

“Yeah.”

“I wish I could be there now. With you.”

“Me too,” El says. She shakes her head a little bit. “I don’t know. This all feels kind of weird. Like a dream.”

“A dream?”

“Yeah. Like it’s not real. Like I’m going to wake up and be in the cabin, and you’ll be on the front porch. I don’t know. This just doesn’t feel right.”

“I know. I have the same feeling.” Mike sighs; it sounds tired. “It doesn’t really feel real. I don’t think it will be until Thanksgiving.”

El nods, then remembers that Mike can’t see it. “Maybe. At least we’ll see each other, then.”

They say their goodbyes a few minutes later. A part of El, a rather large part, wants to curl up under her covers and hug a pillow to herself and pretend she can’t feel the overwhelming sadness on her chest, pretend like the pillow is Mike and she is in the cabin and Hopper is alive and she can use her powers instead of having a buzzing in her ears and everything is okay. But she knows that won’t help anything, so she heads back into the kitchen and takes her seat at the table and tries to smile and find a new Scrabble word. 

* * *

Six weeks comes and goes, and it’s Thanksgiving. 

Mike steps out of his mom’s car, and for a moment all El can do is look at him. He’s the same as he was before, but God, has the separation made her heart fonder. It feels like it can almost explode outside of her chest as the light catches at the edges of his frame, his hand paused and curled around the side of the door almost elegantly as he listens to something his mother says. The little bit of his voice she can hear while he replies eases the pressure on her heart. 

And then his head turns toward her, and his expression breaks into something that could only mirror the joy she feels inside of herself, and she feels her face lift into the same as his. Inexplicably, she can feel her eyes burning as he quickens his pace towards her. Her arms are lifted before he’s even close, and he closes the distance between them in a few long strides. 

“Mike,” she breathes, just as her arms find their home around his shoulders as his wrap around her waist. He feels like he’s shaking as he whispers her name against her shoulder, and then her tears start to fall. She presses her face into the crook of his neck, and she feels him do the same, fitting next to each other like puzzle pieces clicking together. 

She thinks she can hear Will whisper “ _gross”_ under his breath from behind her, followed by the sound of Jonathan’s hand lightly smacking his shoulder. She might laugh, if she wasn’t so preoccupied with Mike. She doesn’t feel the need to move, and he clearly doesn’t either. She’d spent six weeks without seeing Mike or touching him, being able to ensure he was alive and well; she didn’t intend to let go a second before she was forced to. 

She angles her head to press a kiss against his cheek, and then her lips are close enough to his ear that she can speak. “Don’t leave again,” she says, when she really means a lot of things. _I’m sorry. I missed you. I love you._ “Not if you can help it. Please.”

If possible, his arms tighten around her. “Never,” he says. “I promise, El. Whenever I can stop it, I will. And if I can’t stop it I’ll find a way. Promise.”

El smiles against his cheek, and they stand there, holding each other up. 

**Author's Note:**

> yes, i am aware that it just changes tenses after the first scene. maybe it's to imply that the events after the first scene are happening presently and the others are before, maybe it's lazy editing, maybe its maybelline. up to you to decide.
> 
> i just love el and the byers bonding and that's that!


End file.
